34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive

cold fjord writes "A scientist has made a weird and wonderful find. 'It's a tale that has all the trappings of a cult 1960s sci-fi movie: Scientists bring back ancient salt crystals, dug up from deep below Death Valley for climate research. The sparkling crystals are carefully packed away until, years later, a young, unknown researcher takes a second look at the 34,000-year-old crystals and discovers, trapped inside, something strange. Something... alive.' The Geological Society of America's current issue of GSA Today has the academic paper."

Specimen handling protocols

[PPH]

Any geo/biology wizards out there care to comment on whether the protocols for handling specimens intended for climate research are adequate to prevent biological contamination?

If the crystals were dated at 34,000 years, but somebody sneezed on them last week .....

Algae present as well

[jeffliott]

Missing from the summary is that there were algae present in the salt crystals as well, and that they likely contributed to the survivability of the bacteria. I'm really curious how the algae survived though!

Re:Algae present as well

[Locke2005]

Obviously the algae were living off of the remains of dead bacteria...

Soviet Political Prisoners Eat Ancient Fauna

[handy_vandal]

In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream - and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preseved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.

The magazine no doubt astonished its small audience with the news of how successfully the flesh of fish could be kept fresh in a frozen state. But few, indeed, among its readers were able to decipher the genuine and heroic meaning of this incautious report.

As for us, however - we understood instantly. We could picture the entrire scene right down to the smallest details: how those present broke up the ice in frenzied haste; how, flouting the higher claims of ichthyology and elbowing each other to be first, they tore off chunks of the prehistoric flesh and hauled them over to the bonfire to thaw them out and bolt them down.

We understood because we ourselves were the same kind of people as those present at that event. We, too were from that powerful tribe of Zeks, unique on the face of the earth, the only people who could devour prehistoric salamander with relish.

From the Preface to The Gulag Archipelago [google.com] by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Re:CNN reports

[Anonymous Coward]

New earth creationists believe the earth is only 6000 yrs old.
Not all creationists put an estimated age on the earth. Some of us think that it is just as preposterous as you do!